雅思阅读 120: Putting a Price on the Air We Breathe（给我们呼吸的空气定价）

改编自 European Commission / World Bank / I4CE（2024-2025）。雅思阅读 Section 3 难度，约 1050 词。 素材来源：https://climate.ec.europa.eu/areas-action/climate-strategies-targets/progress-climate-action/eu-climate-action-progress-report-2025/chapter-2-eu-emission-trading-system_en

Reading Passage

A. For most of modern history, the atmosphere was treated as a free dumping ground. A factory could burn coal, a power station could load its chimneys with carbon dioxide, and neither paid a penny for the warming that followed. Carbon pricing is the blunt, elegant idea intended to fix that market failure. Make polluters pay for every tonne of carbon they release, the reasoning goes, and they will find it cheaper to pollute less. There are two main ways to set the price. A carbon tax fixes the price directly, letting the market decide how much it emits. An emissions trading scheme, by contrast, fixes the quantity of pollution allowed and lets firms bid up the price of the permits they need. By early 2024, about seventy-five countries and regions had adopted one or the other, covering roughly a quarter of global greenhouse-gas emissions — a share that had grown by a tenth in four years. In 2024 alone, these mechanisms raised about a hundred and three billion dollars in revenue. That money, in principle, is the instrument's hidden strength: it can be spent on green investment, on cutting other taxes, or on compensating the households that feel the price most. In practice, how fairly it is spent decides whether the scheme survives its first unpopular winter.

B. The flagship experiment is the European Union's Emissions Trading System, launched in 2005. It caps the total amount of carbon that covered power stations, factories and later airlines may release, then shrinks that cap every year. Early on, the system was criticised for giving away too many permits and pricing carbon too cheaply; between roughly 2012 and 2017 the price languished, and polluters had little reason to change. Reforms tightened the cap and removed surplus allowances, and by the late 2010s the price began to climb. The early, cheap years had taught operators little; the later, expensive ones taught them a great deal about where to cut. By the end of 2024, the sectors under the ETS had cut their emissions by half compared with 2005 — a reduction that, on its current trajectory, puts the system on course to meet its 2030 target of a sixty-two-per-cent cut. Independent studies of French manufacturers regulated by the scheme found they had reduced emissions by fourteen per cent in the early years and sixteen per cent later on, compared with similar firms outside the cap.

C. The evidence from taxes is more scattered but still suggestive. Sweden runs one of the oldest and highest carbon taxes in the world, and studies credit it with driving down emissions by around six per cent a year. British Columbia's tax produced estimated reductions of between five and fifteen per cent. Yet the same literature is candid about limits. In transport and home heating, where low-carbon alternatives are expensive or unavailable, pricing alone has produced only modest and uncertain effects; the price works only where a cheap alternative exists to switch to. Carbon pricing, researchers stress, is not a single instrument whose effect can be quoted as one number. Its power depends entirely on what sits beside it — subsidies for renewables, rules forcing efficiency, the cost of clean alternatives. Alone, a carbon price nudges; bundled with the rest of climate policy, it accelerates. That dependence is both the scheme's weakness and its design: it works best as part of a system, never as a stand-alone cure.

D. The political vulnerability of the whole approach is where the cleanest story frays. In higher-income countries, carbon pricing is typically regressive: it hits poorer households proportionally harder, because they spend a larger share of their income on fuel and heat. That unpopularity has begun to bite. In 2025, the government of British Columbia moved to scrap its own carbon tax, the province of Saskatchewan paused its performance standards programme, and a majority in the Dutch parliament voted to abolish the national levy on carbon dioxide. The revenue picture softened too: the hundred and three billion dollars raised in 2024 was slightly below the record of the year before, largely because the price of European permits fell. When voters feel the bill at the petrol pump without seeing the benefit, the instrument that economists love becomes the one politicians run from. Recycling the revenue back to households — as a dividend, a rebate or lower other taxes — is the standard answer, but it is easier to design in a seminar than to sell at a rally. Politicians who promise both a green economy and cheap petrol, experience suggests, cannot deliver both for long.

E. The honest verdict, then, is neither triumph nor failure. Carbon pricing works where it is credible, well designed and paired with alternatives; it does not work where the price is too low, the politics too thin, or the switch to clean energy too expensive. The European experience shows that a tightening cap can drive deep cuts in heavy industry and power. The 2025 rollbacks show that the same cuts are politically fragile without fairness. What no serious analyst now argues is that the price can be set once and ignored. It must rise steadily, its proceeds must be spent on the people who bear the cost, and it must be paired with the technologies that make the lower-carbon choice the easy one. Putting a price on the air, in the end, was never the whole climate policy. It was only the mechanism that makes all the others possible — and, like every mechanism made by people, it works only as well as the will that keeps it turned on. A price that collapses in a recession, or that is repealed by an angry parliament, buys nothing; a price that holds, and that refunds its proceeds to households, may outlast the politicians who set it.

Questions 1-4

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B, C, D and E from the list of headings below.

List of Headings i. The flagship EU experiment and its measurable effect ii. What carbon taxes have achieved — and where they stall iii. The political weakness behind the numbers iv. Neither triumph nor failure — a fair verdict v. How permits are auctioned online vi. Why the atmosphere warms vii. The history of Swedish industry

1. Paragraph B: ____
2. Paragraph C: ____
3. Paragraph D: ____
4. Paragraph E: ____

Questions 5-8

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

5. What is the difference between a carbon tax and an emissions trading scheme? A. A tax fixes the price; a trading scheme fixes the quantity of pollution. B. A tax fixes quantity; a trading scheme fixes price. C. They are identical in every way. D. A tax is only used in Europe.

6. What happened to EU ETS emissions by the end of 2024? A. They rose by half compared with 2005. B. They fell by half compared with 2005. C. They stayed exactly the same. D. They were banned entirely.

7. Why is carbon pricing described as "regressive"? A. It benefits rich countries only. B. It costs poorer households a larger share of their income. C. It raises no revenue. D. It applies only to large factories.

8. What does the writer conclude about carbon pricing? A. It is a complete solution to climate change. B. It works only when credible, fair and paired with clean alternatives. C. It should be abandoned everywhere. D. It has no measurable effect.

Questions 9-13

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer?

Write:

• TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
• FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
• NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

9. By early 2024, carbon-pricing schemes covered roughly a quarter of global greenhouse-gas emissions.
10. The EU ETS price was consistently very high from its launch in 2005.
11. Carbon pricing alone has produced large, certain reductions in transport and home heating.
12. In 2025, British Columbia moved to scrap its own carbon tax.
13. Carbon pricing raised about a hundred and three billion dollars in 2024.

Questions 14-15

Complete the summary below using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage.

An emissions trading scheme fixes the (14) __________ of pollution allowed and lets firms bid for permits, whereas a carbon (15) __________ sets the price directly.

答案与解析

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